Check Out What Twitter Is Split Testing on THEIR Site…

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Twitter Testing

Anyone who has been reading my blog for more than about 60 seconds knows there is a reason why Michel Fortin calls me a “Fanatical Tester”.

Continuous testing is the key factor that differentiates wildly successful online businesses and marketers, from the rest of the pack.

There is just no better way to gain a devastating long term advantage over your competition.

And as someone who has been running online split and multivariate tests (over 7,000 total) on my own sites and my clients sites for over a decade now, I was not surprised to discover that Twitter was running a few tests of their own.

And they are running their tests on an element of their site that I’ve identified time and time again as one of the items that can give a significant boost to conversion rates, and that element is their Submit Button.

As you can see from the screenshots below, Twitter is testing the wording on their button:

The words you use on your submit, order and add to cart buttons can play a major role in the response rates you get.

The absolute WORST thing you can have a button say is, “Submit”. Yuck!

By just testing different words on your own buttons, you can often see 20% to 35% boosts in the number of people who will click on your buttons.

The folks over at Twitter are also doing several things on this submit button that have been proven effective by my own testing…

I’ve found that for the main buttons and calls to action on your site, SIZE MATTERS! And usually (in most of my tests) the bigger, the better.

Second, the button is ORANGE in color. While the color orange does not always increase click thru rates, and win in ALL split tests (your target audience plays a role in the color psychology of what works best on your particular site), orange is an eye-gravity attracting color that does boost response rates in about 65% to 75% of my tests.

Also, you’ll notice that for buttons with only 2 words, they capitalize each letter. (“Join Today”, “Sign Up”)

However, for button copy with more than 2 words they are using sentence case, only capitalizing the first word. (“Give it a try”, “Let me in”, “Get started now”.)

While the capitalization of your button text may sound like a minor element, in my testing I’ve found that about 80% of the time, NOT capitalizing each word in 3+ word buttons can improve conversion rates slightly.

Additionally, you’ll notice a small arrow symbol “>” at the end of each button.

This is also something I’ve tested, that can give a slight boost to conversions in most cases because it implies a bit of visual, forward momentum deeper into the process.

The “Primary Link Feedback” is the cursor ARROW changing into a pointing FINGER, when the mouse hovers over the button. This is a web standard (that unfortunately not all web designers follow on all buttons) that I’ve tested to increase button click-thru rates.

The “Secondary Link Feedback” is more subtle, but if you look closely it is there. The orange color of the button, and the text on the button both get slightly darker when the mouse hovers over the button, further indicating that the button is a clickable element.

Again, this type of Secondary Link Feedback has tested well for me in the past.

If you want to run your own test rounds on your submit button, check out these blog post below where I show you the actual results of many of my own submit button testing:

While the button is certainly a high leverage item to test, you are correct… With the level of traffic they get, they should be testing DOZENS of other related variables.

From what I can see (using a couple of my “ninja tools” I use to spy on what other sites are currently testing and have tested in the past), they actually HAVE run quite a few tests on the page.

However, based on tweaks I know would help them from my own past testing there still is a ton of room for improvement. And like you said, with their traffic levels there is no excuse for them to not be testing more elements.

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Carol Hansen and Michelle Rutkowski, Rachel Arciniega. Rachel Arciniega said: RT @carolz_place: Check Out What Twitter Is Split Testing on THEIR Site… http://ow.ly/1XTaC Good info. [...]

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